"Our Christian Heritage"

READING

William Ellery Channing was a popular liberal preacher of the nineteenth century. He was the first in his time to articulate a Unitarian view of Christianity. Channing sought to understand the “mind and heart of Jesus,” not the “technical theology” about him, as this passage explains.

“When I hear, as I do, [those] disputing about Jesus, and imagining that they know him by settling some theory as to his generation in time or eternity, or as to his rank in the scale of being, I feel that their knowledge of him is about as great as I should have of some saint or hero by studying his genealogy. These controversies have built up a technical theology, but give no insight into the mind and heart of Jesus; and without this the true knowledge of him cannot be enjoyed. And here I would observe . . . that I know not a more effectual method of hiding Jesus from us, of keeping us strangers to him, than the inculcation of the doctrine which . . . makes him God himself. This doctrine throws over him a mistiness. For myself, when I attempt to bring it home, I have not a real being before me, not a soul which I can understand and sympathize with, but a vague shifting image, which gives nothing of the stability of knowledge. . . . It strikes me almost irresistibly as fiction. On the other hand, Jesus, contemplated as he is set before us in the gospel, as one mind, one heart, answering to my own in all its essential powers and affections . . . is a being who bears the marks of reality, whom I can understand, whom I can receive into my heart as the best of friends, with whom I can become intimate, and whose society I can and do anticipate among the chief blessings of my future being.”

William Ellery Channing, The Works of William Ellery Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1886), p. 319.

SERMON

Because the Unitarian Universalist tradition emerged out of liberal Christianity, our relationship to our Christian roots is complex, carrying both institutional and personal tensions into the present day. Today’s Unitarian Universalism appeals to people of varied backgrounds, religious and secular. While some contemporary Unitarian Universalists may have grown up Christian, others grew up Jewish or Hindu or Muslim, and so on – or without any religion at all. This diversity is a positive value for us. It is a reflection of our larger world, and of our commitment to pluralistic community.

But it is also confusing. What is our Christian identity – if we have one at all? The answers depend greatly on which one of us you ask, and what our experience has been. Those people who find in Unitarian Universalism a refuge from a faith they have abandoned – perhaps after a painful struggle – fiercely protect our differences with Christianity. Those who cherish their Christian heritage but seek a wider range for their spiritual lives appreciate the common ground we share. Many are ambivalent; some even hostile. It’s a volatile mix.

Our history can help us navigate this territory. It tells us why we are the way we are. From it we can learn what our predecessors both rejected and kept in their search for a relevant faith.

Back in the day of William Ellery Channing, the Protestant church in America was sharply divided into two groups, liberal and conservative. The conservatives were strict hellfire-and-brimstone Calvinists; keeping Unitarians and Universalists alike busy fending them off and refining their own liberal views. Channing was an enormously popular liberal preacher – and like the front-runners on our evening news, was frequently attacked by the conservatives. Actually, the debate between these two groups probably was the evening news. When the conservatives wanted to insult the liberals, they called them “Unitarians,” referring to the unthinkable heresy of denying the divinity of Jesus.

Channing and his followers defended their understanding of the Christian faith as a way of life, not a set of beliefs. Nobody knows whether or not Jesus was the son of God, they argued. Listen to what Jesus said, and live according to his teachings. It’s your deeds, not your creeds, that show who you really are.

Whether the liberals wanted it or not, the “Unitarian” label stuck, and they decided they might as well live with it and its heretical reputation. When Channing gave his famous breakaway sermon in Baltimore in 1819, he titled it “Unitarian Christianity,” unapologetically reclaiming its controversial history. The sermon lasted an hour and a half. He had a lot to say. We have been Unitarian ever since.

One aspect of our history that is often downplayed is our skepticism about theology. Yes, there were complicated theological differences among nineteenth century Christians, some of those differences going all the way back to the fourth century. But Channing and his followers had little patience with theological debates. He wrote of his frustration “with [those] disputing about Jesus, and imagining that they know him by settling some theory as to his generation in time or eternity.”[1] Concentrate instead on “the mind and heart of Jesus,” he continued, everything else is “mistiness.”[2]

I suspect most of us feel the same way. Much of what passes for religious doctrine, yesterday and today, is a composite of myths, artifacts, and political diatribes, much of it original, even colorful – and worthy of study if you’re so inclined – but very hard to believe. It has little to do with the longing that many of us feel, the desire to live more fully present, awake, and free of our own demons. Channing and other Unitarians argued that religion should be about our longing and how we live; not about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

So Christian theology and its doctrine of Jesus as the son of God do not belong to our heritage; but a healthy appreciation of Jesus as a prophet and teacher certainly does. The Jesus of the gospel, Channing wrote, “is a being who bears the marks of reality.”[3] A Unitarian can read the story of the “good Samaritan” and learn that Jesus taught kindness to the stranger, even one who might be an enemy. The story is an important lesson in ethics. It also reverberates through the news of the day, as we consider what it means to have a Guantanamo or immigrants who move in next door.

Channing and his friends thought the bible had its problems too. In his Baltimore sermon, Channing took on the conservative belief that scripture – the Hebrew bible and the New Testament – were the word of God. In what historian David Robinson calls “one of the most controversial sermons ever written in America and one of the most enduring,”[4] Channing made good use of biblical scholarship, proving that the bible was written by people, and assembled over a long period of time. Unitarians “feel it is our bounden duty to exercise our reason upon [the Bible] perpetually,”[5] he preached, and integrate what we learn about scripture into our faith. That of course changes our interpretation of what we read.

Channing believed in God, grounded his faith in scripture, and worshipped Jesus – but as you can tell, his Christianity was very different from the conservative version of his time – or ours. Channing Christianity is an ethical religion, one that turns to the story of Jesus for moral courage and generosity of spirit, not theology or doctrine. I can well understand how Unitarian Universalists today might want to be Channing Christians, and we have some among us.

William Ellery Channing was active in the first half of the nineteenth century, and his followers included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker. A lot has happened over all those years. Unitarianism has evolved, bringing forward the liberal Christian ethos that first defined it, but moving outward into the world. Just as our sanctuary banners suggest, our inquiry into religion might take us anywhere, well beyond our own roots. And that is who we are: a pluralistic community.

In the enthusiasm over becoming more diverse ourselves, and feeling free to explore spirituality east and west, and searching our own depths for what we really believe, our Christian heritage may not surface as often as it deserves to. Because of the dominance of conservative Christianity, especially in our own country, we know too much about what we reject – and not enough about what we accept. It’s not our fault. We’ve been busy doing what Channing told us to do: using our reason to interpret our religion. Someone has to stand up for evolution and the separation of church and state.

Channing set in motion many of the ideas that still guide our faith today, and beyond his ethical Christianity and embrace of reason, there remains one other important legacy. Channing had faith in human nature. All those debates with the Christian conservatives of his time honed his perspective not only of God but also of humanity, and Channing’s later work was all about humanity. He preached that all people, whatever their opportunities or abilities, were capable of growth and development. This assertion, David Robinson notes, “had potentially unsettling social implications,”[6] and Channing knew it. He was speaking of everything from slavery to class discrimination. Humanists of the twentieth century claimed Channingas their predecessor, and rightly so. For Unitarianism has continued to evolve, and all of us, whatever our personal beliefs, have benefited from his contribution. There is a freshness and intelligence in his thought that we still need to guide us through the challenges of our time.

Today we continue to evolve. Now we have a religious community that recognizes not only a variety of religious traditions, but resonates deeply to secular influences. We want it both ways, and that causes tension, but where there is tension there is growth – and movement towards new insight and truth. That spirit that keeps us moving forward, unafraid of what we might learn, is also our Christian heritage, as Channing would have it; I doubt he would be afraid of where we are going now.
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1 William Ellery Channing, The Works of William Ellery Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1886), p. 319.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), p. 32.
5 Channing, “Unitarian Christianity,” as quoted in Robinson, p. 32.
6 Robinson, p. 33.